A digital audio workstation or DAW is an electronic device or computer software application for recording, editing, and producing audio files such as songs, musical pieces, human speech or sound effects. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrated stand-alone unit, all the way to a highly complex configuration of numerous components controlled by a central computer. DAWs have a central interface that allows the user to alter and mix multiple recordings and tracks into a final produced piece.
A DAW may refer to the audio editing software itself, but traditionally, a computer-based DAW has four basic components: a computer, either a sound card or audio interface, digital audio editor software, and at least one input device for adding or modifying data. This may be as simple as a mouse (if no external instruments are used) or as sophisticated as a piano-style MIDI controller keyboard or automated fader board for mixing track volumes.
The computer acts as a host for the sound card/audio interface, while the software provides the interface and functionality for audio editing. The sound card/external audio interface typically converts analog audio signals into digital form, and digital back to analog audio when playing it back; it may also assist in further processing of the audio. The software controls all related hardware components and provides a user interface to allow for recording, editing, and playback.
As software systems, DAWs are designed with many user interfaces, but generally they are based on a multitrack tape recorder metaphor, making it easier for recording engineers and musicians already familiar with using tape recorders to become familiar with the new systems. Therefore, computer-based DAWs tend to have a standard layout that includes transport controls (play, rewind, record, etc.), track controls and a mixer, and a waveform display. Single-track DAWs display only one (mono or stereo form) track at a time. The term “track” is still used with DAWs, even though there is no physical track as there was in the era of tape-based recording.
Multitrack DAWs support operations on multiple tracks at once. Like a mixing console, each track typically has controls that allow the user to adjust the overall volume, equalization and stereo balance (pan) of the sound on each track. In a traditional recording studio additional rackmount processing gear is physically plugged into the audio signal path to add reverb, compression, etc. However, a DAW can also route in software or use software plugins (or VSTs) to process the sound on a track.
There are countless software plugins for DAW software, each one coming with its own unique functionality, thus expanding the overall variety of sounds and manipulations that are possible. Some of the functions of these plugins include digital effects units which can modify a signal with distortion, resonators, equalizers, synthesizers, compressors, chorus, virtual amp, limiter, phaser, and flangers. Each have their own form of manipulating the soundwaves, tone, pitch, and speed of a simple sound and transform it into something different. To achieve an even more distinctive sound, multiple plugins can be used in layers, and further automated to manipulate the original sounds and mold it into a completely new sample.
Plugins, however, are limited in terms of flexibility and choices for changeable parameters. DAWs and DAW plugins currently do not permit the selection of a best audio performance from a set of audio performance take. Optimization of the selection of a best performance track is typically performed manually by a recording engineer. Unfortunately, a very skilled recording engineer spends about one hour for every minute of a song's length to try to get the perfect vocal take. The reason why it takes so long is that the recording engineer or the producer may have singers sing the same line of the song five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten different times. It is time consuming to perform multiple takes to obtain the bits and pieces that the recording engineer likes or are the most in-tune.